Angola Women’s Day: In Honour of Deolinda de Almeida Rodrigues
On the declaration of independence on 11 November 1975, the newly installed government of the People's Republic of Angola declared 2 March 1976 as Angola Women’s Day. In line with International Women’s Day on 8 March, this became a day in which the women of Angola would remember their martyred dead and rededicate themselves to the cause of the Angolan revolution. The women pledged to eradicate all vestiges of colonialism and to build a free and independent Angola where exploitation of every kind would be eradicated.
2 March is celebrated as a day when Deolinda de Almeida Rodrigues and five of her female comrades were captured in 1967 and later abused and killed in 1968 by the enemy in the then Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo). In 1986, a monument was erected to honour Rodrigues and the five other female members of the Esquadrão Kamy in Heroines’ Square in Luanda.
Deolinda Rodrigues Francisco de Almeida, whose nom de guerre was “Langidila”, was a Pan-African, Angolan revolutionary internationalist, guerrilla fighter, a writer and poet. She was a member of the MPLA, the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (or the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola) and, in addition to seeing combat, worked for the organisation as a translator, educator, and radio host.
Deolinda was born into a Methodist family, in Catete, Angola, on 10 February 1939. Her parents, Mariana Pedro N
